We're stewing in Marathon suffering

In case you happen to be unaware, today is the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon terror bombings. And next week is the marathon itself.

So buckle in. We're about to be swamped by a tsunami of media-induced pathos.

The TV networks are gearing up with a seemingly endless wave of specials and slickly-produced packages, most accompanied by the maudlin, soulful violin strings designed to evoke maximum sadness and grief. Newspapers are in full-blown anniversary flower and the "Boston Strong" motto is everywhere: Tweeted and posted. Plastered on T-shirts, coffee mugs and bumpers of cars.

We're told that the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is still struggling to heal, because one of the alleged bombers matriculated there. Meanwhile, the Boston Athletic Association and John Hancock have produced a new marathon app for iPhone and Android. The slogan reads, "This year, we're all Boston Marathoners."

It's a nice sentiment, except it's not true. The marathon bombing didn't happen to everyone. For most of us, life hasn't changed one whit.

"It's not that I lack compassion," a friend told me yesterday. "But I have anniversary fatigue. After a while, enough is enough."

I can already hear the outrage from those appalled by what is falsely considered callousness. How could we say such a thing? How dare we? Unless we experienced the horror, we have no right to claim knowledge of someone else's pain.

My point exactly. I wasn't there and neither were most of us. The marathon bombing was a terrible tragedy. Families lost loved ones and many lives were indeed changed forever. Good people sympathize and offer support.

But there's a line between support and cringe-worthy saturation. For me — and I know I'm in the minority here — that line was crossed when "Boston Strong" became almost synonymous with a victory by the Boston Red Sox.

This narcissistic need to share and aggrandize tragedy isn't confined to the marathon bombing. It happened after 9/11, when Americans were repeatedly informed that our lives would never be the same. Closer to home, after six brave firefighters lost their lives in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire of 1999, plans initially called for a garish monument four stories high and the size of a football field. Thankfully, the men and women closest to the loss were the ones to cry overkill — the firefighters themselves.

The urge to publicly clasp pain and pathos to our breasts is a relatively modern phenomenon. For example, much has been written about the Greatest Generation, about how our parents and grandparents went off to war and made enormous sacrifices. The soldiers who were lucky enough to have lived returned to their lives with no fanfare or expectation of praise. They suffered horrible wounds and watched good friends die. Yet they hardly ever spoke of their experiences. That's the way it was.

Last October, when a reporter for The Boston Globe tweeted that he was sick of the "Boston Strong" slogan, he was slammed as insensitive. Yesterday, a friend admitted on Facebook that she was tired of the media coverage. Another woman responded that the post saddened her, because it meant "that others don't have the compassion that many of us have."

Really? Is that what we've come to? Unless we wallow in sentiment and wear slogans on our sleeve, we're uncaring?

Today marks a grim milestone in Massachusetts, and the survivors of the marathon bombing deserve our respect, support and compassion. What they don't need is the presumption that we feel their pain, because we can't. It belongs to them.